Higher Education at Risk: Strategies to Improve Outcomes, Reduce Tuition, and Stay Competitive in a Disruptive Environment

Sandra Featherman believes that colleges are in denial about the severity of the threats to the current model of higher education.

Based on her own experience as a president, as a trustee, and as a board member who has worked in private and public universities – and on interviews with the presidents of major institutions – she offers both a trenchant analysis of those threats and clear prescriptions about the painful but necessary decisions that colleges need to make to ensure they remain viable, accessible and affordable, and deliver a high-quality education.

Sandra Featherman considers higher education to be at a game-changing moment. When markets don’t function well – as is the case with today’s college marketplace with offerings that cost too much and return too little – it opens the door to new types of suppliers, who offer new ways of providing what students are looking for, particularly the increasing cohort of mature, working students.

In the face of new competitors – for-profit education companies, technology start-ups, and foreign universities vying for international students – trustees and senior level administrators are generally stuck in a traditional ethos and with decision-making processes unsuited to these times. They know what used to work, and find it easier to follow old ways than to make the difficult transition to new ways of delivering education.

She lays out a strategy: that emphasizes the centrality of students and how to provide them with the most effective learning environment; that is clear-eyed about focusing on the core missions, and abandoning practices that constrain or impede them; and that requires constant self-monitoring to learn from and act upon what works. She offers a blueprint for redesigning institutions, for paring away what is unnecessary and cost ineffective, and for adopting the best technologies, all in the service of developing meaningful degree programs at an affordable price, and widening access for under-represented groups.

She ranges over the implications of budget decisions, accreditation, and MOOCs; addresses government regulation and tuition costs; presents promising new models; and concludes with 11 key recommendations that should be heeded by all higher education administrators and trustees.

Sandra Featherman is President Emeritus of the University of New England. She was the president from 1995 through July 2006.Dr. Featherman has vast experience in higher education standards and accreditation. She has worked at both public and private institutions, and has served with Research 1, master’s Plus, and Community Colleges, as a faculty member, administrator or trustee. She was chair of the Board of 2 community colleges (in Pennsylvania and Minnesota), and is a board member of a new University of Florida system institution, Florida Polytechnic University. She has been the elected Faculty Senate President and the Assistant to the President of Temple University, and was the Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Minnesota/Duluth. Her many awards include Champion of Economic Development, Maine Development Foundation; Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania, Governor of Pennsylvania; Woman of Distinction, International Women's Forum; Woman of Distinction, Girl Scouts of Maine; City of Philadelphia Community Service Award; Brooks Graves Award, Pennsylvania Political Science Association; and Administrator of the Year, Minnesota Women in Higher Education. She has served on the New England Association of Schools and Colleges Commission on Higher Education, and is the vice-chair of the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation. She chaired the Board of the Pennsylvania Association of Community College Trustees, and was a commissioner on the American Council on Education Commission on Women in Higher Education and the Center for Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Equity in Higher Education. Her leadership activities include those of president of the Maine Independent Colleges Association, and the Greater Portland Alliance of Colleges and Universities. She also has served on the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, Committee on Public Policy.